


nothing can compare to this

by ineachandeveryway



Category: Uncharted (Video Games)
Genre: Baby Adventures, F/M, Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-18
Updated: 2016-10-20
Packaged: 2018-08-23 07:44:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8319622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ineachandeveryway/pseuds/ineachandeveryway
Summary: nothing can compare to this, his mother had said once, and though he can't connect the memory, he does know the feeling. —or, a post-canon nate/elena drabble series, for elate week!





	1. day one: promise | bond

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> too busy being yours to fall for someone new.

Nate would never dare to say the words aloud, but labor in and of itself is an exhausting endeavor, even if a guy's only job is to hold his girl's hand.

"Goddamn," he murmurs, stretching his fingers. A sleeping Cassandra readjusts in his arms, all eight and a half pounds of her nestled up against his chest. His daughter is barely two days old but seems to know her father well, a coo coming off her lips whenever she wakes up to see his face.

Nate makes his way out of the nursery, tips his head to an assortment of doctors and nurses and patients while passing through the hallway. He and Elena aren't known incredibly well in this part of the world—Mumbai, the site of their latest excavation, and at _her_ insistence—but the company is warm and welcoming nonetheless. Cassie has even taken to a few of the nurses.

As the father-daughter pair walks into her hospital room, an immeasurable smile envelops his wife's face. Bedridden since her surgery, a weary Elena hasn't done much outside of eating and sleeping these past few days. Nate knows the side effects of the C-section will take a little time to work through, but he thinks that Cassie will contribute to a complete recovery.

"Hey, there," Elena whispers. Nate slips their daughter into her open arms, then watches with allure as she touches their noses together.

 _Nothing can compare to this,_ his mother had said once, and though he can't connect the memory, he does know the feeling. To have and to hold something—some _one_ —belonging to no one else, it's inexplicable. Nate doesn't think he'll ever want to let go.

"You need anything?" he asks, aching to be of use. Elena looks up from their daughter; her face is all soft lines and round cheeks, and amusement twinkles like a star in each hazel eye. Her hospital gown falls just past her shoulder, giving way to skin tanned like olive and honey. Nate licks his lips.

"Some water would be nice," she answers. "Maybe a jello cup, too."

"Alright, then." He walks over to her, takes hold of her covered shoulder and presses a kiss to the one that's bare. A shiver of delight ripples through Elena's body, but the most she reciprocates is a brush of her lips across his cheek. Exhaustion is laced in her every action, but Nate doesn't mind so long as she's here, in front of him, their daughter in her arms.

"I don't know about the jello cup," he says, before turning to go, "but I'll ask one of the nurses." A thought crosses him suddenly, and he stops for a second at the doorway. It's been so long since everyday banter; at least a week, give or take a day. Nate looks back to flash Elena a devilish grin. "Maybe the pretty one."

"Oh, the _pretty_ one, huh?" she counters. Her gaze is focused intently on a still sleeping Cassie, but when Nate comes back for a second round of affection, Elena easily turns in to his body. His breath hovers warm against her ear, and she can't help but smile when he says, "Too busy being yours to fall for someone new, remember?"

"I remember."

Nate chuckles, drops down to nuzzle a raspberry onto Cassie's warm cheek. _Me and my girls,_ he thinks.

Nothing could ever compare.


	2. day two: adventure | luck

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i'm a big kid now!

Never in her life has Elena imagined missing a flight because of a bathroom break. She’s never been victim to such an occasion before, and although mother of a rambunctious toddler she may be, she certainly doesn’t intend to make it an occurrence now.

At least, not until Cassie yelps, “Bathroom!” mere minutes before they’re supposed to drive off to the airport. The Drake-Fishers’ latest assignment lies waiting for them in the Sicilian countryside, but little Cassie’s outburst begs the question of whether it’ll stand to wait so long at all.

Already, she’s dived back towards the door for two, different reasons. First, the lack of her favorite stuffed camel, a recent birthday present from Nate. And second, the need for one last hug from Vicky. The ever growing labrador retriever is a little too young and wild to come on this trip, but Nate and Elena have promised their daughter a ‘next time’.

Vicky lets out a bark as Cassie tumbles inside and scrambles past the sitter. Nate can only offer a sheepish grin as he and Elena follow, but their neighbor shrugs it off and gets back to her midterm paper. Something about 3D printing and scientists playing God, if Elena remembers correctly. She thinks the girl may be in a medical ethics class.

“Hey,” Nate says, nudging her shoulder. They’ve stopped just outside of the bathroom, a sliver of the inside visible through a crack in the doorway. “Think we should go in and help her?” he asks. Elena manages a peak at their daughter and resists the urge to laugh. The two-year-old currently struggles with pulling down her jeans, fingers fumbling with the button at the top.

“I don’t know,” she answers. “What do you think?”

There’s a three second silence on Nate’s end of things before he mumbles, “I was going to agree with whatever you said.”

“Ah.”

A frustrated huff sounds from inside the bathroom, and Nate and Elena both take to the door. Cassie’s cheeks have moderately crimsoned by now, her attempts at unbuttoning her jeans no more fruitful than they were minutes before. Nate runs a hand through his hair and chuckles, then steps inside and leans down to his daughter’s height. “Here, sweetheart.”

He undoes the button, but is careful to leave all else to Cassie’s doing. At only two years old, their daughter has a firmly defined sense of self agency. Her decisions are always her own, or at least she likes to think so, even when Nate and Elena have helped a little with advice and encouragement.

And yet, Elena can’t help but jut in, “And now you—”

“Wait!”

“Actually, no, you—”

“ _Wait,_ Mommy! _I_ wanna do it!”

There’s a flutter of something inside her stomach, then. Elena’s gaze flickers briefly to Nate before she steps out into the hallway, then shuts the door behind her. Cassie can be heard mumbling for a while, as can Nate in reply, and it’s not long after that the flush of the toilet echoes throughout the hallway.

Cassie barrels past the door, water-soaked hands held high in the air as she yells, “I did it, I did it! Vicky, I did it!” The blonde baby doesn’t so much as glance at her mother as she runs to the living room, and when Nate walks out after, Elena can’t help but hide her contorted face.

“Hey,” he murmurs, and within seconds, she’s enveloped in his arms, her face pressed deep into the crook of his neck. A tear or two threatens to slip past her cheeks, and Elena croaks out, in barely a whisper, “She did it?”

A ghost of a kiss across her hair; a wipe of his thumb under her eye.

“She did it.”

It takes all of Elena’s self composure not to tremble.

Nate pulls her head back for a moment, and Elena almost yells at him for the amusement dancing across his face. Love is laced into the smile that pulls his lips, and the blue of his eyes meets her head-on, takes her back to memories of ocean water and sun-kissed laughter. Elena closes her eyes, leans into the touch as he cups one side of her face.

“She’ll come back,” he whispers.

Elena looks up. “Promise?”

And it’s then that she hears the sounds, hears the exhilarated barking and untamed laughter coming closer. Nate pulls her in by the waist, rests her head on his shoulder. His voice is an affirmation of life in the breathtaking quiet, and Elena believes it. She believes it more than she ever has before—

—"I promise.“

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> potty training is totally an adventure, okay? also, comment!


	3. day three: broken | hurt // day four: family | blood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> time moves slow, when half of your heart has yet to come home.

When he first walks into the room, Elena’s face is barely visible, just a sliver of it peeking out from under the covers. Her hair flies out from her face and tangles messily, but Nate resists the urge to do anything to fix it. His wife doesn’t want to move right now; if things had gone her way, she’d be curled up in the bathtub instead, cold water pouring over her head.

(That’s how he found her yesterday.)

But the last thing that Nate wants is for his wife to establish that she’s alone—because she’s not. They’ve got a house and a daughter, two rings and a plethora of photographs, to prove that. Nate just isn’t sure that Elena wants to admit to it.

“Brought you some curry,” he murmurs, before sinking onto the bed and pressing a kiss to her hairline. Elena hardly shifts. Her face is already turned to him, thankfully. Nate spoons a small sip of curry into her mouth.

“Where’s Cassie?” Elena asks.

Nate considers the question. “She’s alright,” he answers, and she is, currently preoccupied with pointing out every fallacy in _Raiders of the Lost Ark_ to her uncle. Sam and Sully are here for the week, or as long as they need to be, and Chloe is flying in with Cutter later this Thursday. The support group isn’t so much for Elena as it is for their four year old daughter.

She needs to be something other than afraid right now.

“I love you, Mommy,” she says every night, before she goes to sleep with Sully. They’re the best and the worst words at the same time, but Nate wouldn’t dare to tell her that.

He adds, “She’s with Sam,” knowing that this answer will put Elena more at ease. The words prompt her to open her mouth a fraction, or at least enough to let by half a spoon of curry. Nate fixates on the curve of her lip, the freckles across her nose, her dimmed, hazel eyes.

“I want to see you in someone,” she’d said, when they first found out.

“What,” Nate had teased, “original not good enough for you?”

“Oh, it is. It is. I just—”

Her hand had wandered up to his face, thumb pressed to the curve of his cheek. The blue of his eyes had met her hazel for the longest of moments before she drew close to his lips, whispered soft, “I want to see you in someone.”

And then she’d kissed him, and he’d wished it.

For a boy with his eyes and the square of his jaw; for someone to be to Cassie what he knew he was to Sam.

Elena Fisher was thirty six years old, and pregnant. It wasn’t an expectation from either of them—

—but then again, neither was the loss.

Nate drops the curry bowl onto the bedside table, shifts gently until his body lines up with hers. Elena’s eyes will barely meet his, but he mirrors her movements from that very first day, cups her face in his hands and runs his thumb across her cheek.

“I love you,” he whispers, and she shuts her eyes, lets a tear fall through. There are eight weeks of love and eight weeks of loss pooled into that tear, and another. Nate draws close, kisses both from her skin. The fit of his body around hers is warm, and she curls into his touch.

“I see you in someone every day,” he tells her. Elena lets out a strangled sound—half laugh and half cry. It’s been a long day, a long week. Nate looks down into her eyes, sees emotion finally spring to life inside them, deep and dark though it may be.

 _And that’s enough?_ she seems to ask.

_Every day, every hour._

“Mommy!” yells Cassie suddenly. The blonde toddler nearly makes it out of the hall and past the doorway, before Sam takes her under the arms, lifts her high into the air. Her laughter can be heard echoing in their home’s every part, and Elena’s eyes stretch wide, glow briefly hazel.

Her lips are parted, and in this light, with her face splotched red and her eyes running dry, hair tangled about her in a haphazard halo, Nate doesn’t think she can look anymore beautiful. He’s sure that Cassie would mirror the sentiment in a heartbeat.

And as their daughter wriggles out of her uncle’s arms, then tumbles over to her parents’ bedside, Nate can’t help but smile against Elena’s cheek. “I see you in someone every day,” he echoes, and her mouth nearly lifts.

_I see you in someone every day._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comment, please!


End file.
